The last hearings in the Shor case at the Cahul Appeals Court were put off. The lawyers for Ilan Shor filed again an application to replace the lawyers. The examination of the application was suspended as the layers raised the exception of unconstitutionality of a text from the Penal Procedure Code. The Appeals Court set the next hearings for next month, starting with February 3, IPN reports.

The text is “there are other circumstances that create reasonable doubts about the judge’s impartiality”. “Any objective observer can see that the legal norm on which the object of the given application is based, in the challenged side, arouses serious doubts as to constitutionality in terms of ambiguousness and unpredictability,” runs the requisition addressed to the CC.

The lawyers note that a number of circumstances appeared in the January 22 hearing and these cast doubt on the impartiality of the three judges trying the case, who violated both imperative norms of the Penal Procedure Code and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which guarantee the defendant’s fundamental right to defense.

Earlier this week, the Superior Council of Magistracy approved the resignation tendered by judge Nina Veleva, of the Cahul Appeals Court, who is also the rapporteur in this case. The draft decree was submitted to the President for signing.

In June 2017, the Chisinau City Court sentenced Ilan Shor to seven years and a half in jail for causing considerable damage to the state by swindle and abuse of trust. The sentence was appealed. In June 2019, Ilan Shor disappeared from the public sphere and was charged with illegal leaving of the country. On August 15, 2019, he was stripped of parliamentary immunity.